Audio only:
In this episode, Trent shares a version of his opening statement with Pearl Davis in their debate on the question, “Is Marriage Bad for Men?”
Transcription:
The following is adapted from my opening statement in my debate with Pearl Davis.
A lot of people in the so-called Red-pill community claim that marriage is a bad deal for men. They use false statistics and fallacious arguments to get men to reject marriage, but in today’s episode I’m going to show what’s wrong with their case. Usually it boils down to one of the following fallacies or errors in reasoning.
First, there is the wrong target fallacy. This happens when a critic focuses on a bad thing related to marriage but concludes this proves that only marriage is bad. For example, anti-marriage advocates often talk about how marriage is a bad deal because men are sometimes mistreated in child custody cases. But that’s not unique to marriage. If you cohabit or even just hookup with a woman you can still father a child and deal with custody issues. However, marriage makes a man the presumed father of the child with natural rights unmarried fathers don’t have, even though unmarried fathers can still be liable to pay child support. The children of unmarried men are 10 times more likely to be aborted. If the child does survive the pregnancy, he is 3-6 times more likely to live in poverty.
Another wrong target is women themselves. Marriage skeptics say it is a bad deal for men because modern women are worse than previous generations of women. They say there just aren’t any women worth marrying. But this argument says nothing about the goodness or badness of marriage.
For many red-pillers, women are good enough for hookups that can result in child custody issues or cohabiting relationships that superficially feel like marriage but are far more likely to fail. But for some reason women aren’t good enough for marriage which, as we will see, benefits men more than hookups and cohabiting.
Also, if there aren’t any good women, then that means there aren’t any good men either because men can’t meet the red pill standards either. Modern men are just as promiscuous and even more overweight than modern women. A 2019 Experian study found that men carry more credit, auto, and mortgage debt than women. Millennial and Gen Z men have weaker grip strength and make less money than older men did at their age.
These critics haven’t shown women are not good enough for men. Instead, the data shows men and women are both in bad shape compared to older generations. But there’s hope! Marriage is the best way for men and women to mature together and bring out the best in one another.
Second, red pillers often rely on the anecdote fallacy. But one sad story about a marriage doesn’t show marriage itself is bad because for every sad story there are statistically 2-3 stories of happy marriages. And there are many stories about sad, sick, lonely men who never marry.
Even marriage skeptics in academia will only argue that, at best, that marriage doesn’t increase happiness. But even they agree that men who marry are better off concerning health, wealth, and happiness than men who never marry.
Third, there’s the comparison fallacy. For example, Pearl Davis says just as you wouldn’t fly on a plane that has a 5% chance of crashing, you shouldn’t get married even if it has similar low odds of divorcing. But you can’t focus on the worst outcomes of one choice while ignoring the worst outcomes of the only other choice. That’s the comparison fallacy. It’s like someone who thinks driving is safer than flying because he only reads a bunch of stories about plane crashes and never thinks about car crashes. Of course, flying is far safer than driving and marriage is less risky than non-marriage.
You can’t compare the best outcomes of non-marriage to the worst outcomes of marriage. You have to compare the typical outcomes in each case, be it flying and driving or marriage and non-marriage. And anti-marriage advocates exaggerate the harms of marriage.
According to the National Center for Family & Marriage Research, the median length of all marriages is not 7-8 years, which is the length of marriages that end in divorce, not all marriages. The median for all marriages is 21 years.
And the divorce rate is closer to 35% not 50%. 50% was a future projection from the 80’s that has since been falsified. In fact, we are now seeing the lowest divorce rates since 1970, about 14 divorces per 1000 married women. For weekly church goers the divorce rate is half the average rate.
Also, just because 35% of marriages end in divorce, that doesn’t mean you have a 1 in 3 chance of absolute misery. Divorce sucks, but people typically survive it intact. In fact, men do better than women after divorce. Men’s income increases by 20% while women are twice as likely to fall into poverty. Alimony is only paid out in less than 10 percent of divorces and, according to the U.S. Census, the average child support payment is $441 dollars a month, of which only 60% usually ends up getting paid. Saying marriage is an arrangement where women are “paid to leave” only reveals a person’s ignorance of child and maternal poverty.
Moreover, women do not get child custody 90% of the time. 95% of custody cases are mutually agreed upon outside the courtroom. Women get full custody 40% of the time, men get full custody 20% of the time, and shared custody makes up the remaining 40%. Women usually get full custody because men don’t ask for it. In a Massachusetts study of 24,000 divorces only 8 percent of men sought custody and 94% of them got full or partial custody.
Finally, a 2006 study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health showed that while divorced men were 27% more likely to die prematurely, 58% of never married men were more likely to die early.
Never married men risk growing older and having few or no social connections. Yes, there are stories of messy divorces but my wife who was a registered nurse can tell you horror stories of men dying alone in the hospital spending every day by themselves staring at the same blotch on the ceiling because they had no one to ever come and visit them.
Now, some men desire marriage and are unable to find a wife, which is tragic. But rejecting marriage out of fear is like the person who refuses to go to the hospital because he worries about medical errors but doesn’t think about people dying at home from easily treatable illnesses.
This doesn’t mean every married man will be happy or that every man who doesn’t marry will be miserable. We are talking about the average results of both groups and, on average, married men fare better.
65% of divorced men get remarried. 93% of men say they would marry their spouse again if they could do marriage over. If anti-marriages advocates are right that marriage is a “death sentence” for men, then why do most men voluntarily go back to the death row after they are “released.” i.e. divorced.
The answer is that these men correctly identify what red pillers fail to grasp: marriage isn’t bad for men. In fact, marriage is good for men. No wonder God told Adam in the book of Genesis, it is not good for the man to be alone, and so he made Eve to remedy this problem.
To make it clear: it’s a lie half of all marriages end in divorce. The truth is that most marriages last a lifetime and 80% to 90% of them identify as happy.
A Gallup survey conducted between 2008 and 2020 of 2.5 million adults showed that married people rate their well-being 12-17 points higher than unmarried people. The General Social Survey from the University of Chicago also shows that married men are twice likely to rate their lives as very happy when compared to non-married men. Married men also make 10% to 20% more money per hour, and have more sex than never married men.. Studies also show that even men who end up divorced live longer, are economically better off, and are just as or even happier than never married men.
Now, marriage skeptics might say these studies only prove that happier, richer men get married and unhappy, poor men don’t get married. But, when you look at the typical married man, he isn’t a 6’2” rich chad. More importantly, if a man chooses to marry then he needs to become marriageable, which involves developing positive traits that make him desirable to women and at the same time improve his own self-esteem and happiness.
But I’m not arguing that marriage makes men happy. I’m arguing against the red pill claim that marriage is bad deal for men, or that it’s likely to make them unhappy. That’s simply not true. In fact, marriage is the best way for men to not just hang on to happiness, but to increase it. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which tracked people for 80 years, said good relationships were the number one predictor of happiness and it showed that men who married ended up happier and lived 7-17 years longer than men who never married.
When I was unmarried, like many unmarried men, I was content thinking two folding chairs and a TV on the ground were sufficient living room furniture. But after you get married, your wife helps you see how much better life can be. You have a desire to provide the best life you can for your wife and children. And you have someone in your corner to root for you even when things get tough. A 2013 Harvard study showed that married men are less likely to get cancer and are even more likely to survive cancer.
Never married men, however, are more likely to not build up for their futures. This leads to a greater chance of living in poverty and suffering premature deaths from suicide, drug overdoses, or just unhealthy lifestyles.
To summarize. Pointing out flaws in women doesn’t prove marriage is bad, because men have those same flaws and marriage is the best way to grow out of those flaws. Telling a sad story about a married man doesn’t prove marriage is bad for all men. Looking only at the risks of marriage doesn’t prove marriage is bad because you have to compare those risks, especially low-risk marriages, to the greater risks of not marrying. And if you do choose to have sex, you face far worse risks than married men.
I am not saying every man needs to get married. My boss likes to say “Man was meant to live in the context of a vow.” Maybe you are called to the priesthood, religious life, or you can make a private vow to use your life to serve others, like Batman.
But we call those things sacrifices because they involve giving up the great good of marriage. If you are a man considering marriage, carefully discern if you should marry the woman you love, but don’t give into hopeless fear.
As a man you weren’t made to live in fear. You were made to cross oceans in small wooden ships. You were made to stare down an invading army and fight until you’re the last man standing. You were made for greatness, not sitting around all day watching cynical YouTube videos and complaining about women.
God invented marriage and gave it to the human race so we would be fruitful and multiply. And Christ raised marriage to a sacrament. And the data is clear from hundreds of thousands of men, that marriage is the primary engine that helps them live a long, healthy, happy life.
Thank you guys so much for watching, if you’d like to learn more check out Brian Wilcox’s book get Married and my debate with Pearl Davis on Pints with Aquinas, also don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to get more great content.